The selfish sods who hold planes up by lingering in the bar or duty free can now be pinpointed, within 4m, by cheap RFID tags on airline boarding passes.
Samuel L Jackson locates late passengers with RFID Enough is enough! I'm gonna tag every motherfucking snake on this motherfucking plane!
What the airline does with the …

Don't worry

RFID not needed on boarding tags

They can add an RFID tag to your ticket when you check your bag in (they usually give you the end of the baggage tag, stuck to either your passport or boarding card). For those not checking a bag in, they don't need an RFID tag as the plane can bloody well leave without them without any delay as there are no bags to unload.

I for one welcome this etc. Leave Wayne & Waynetta in Wetherspoons, ditch their bags on the runway 1 min after scheduled departure and then charge them for the privilege..

Better than that

Another cheap & cheerless airline lets passengers take all shapes and sizes of hand luggage out of the UK but ruthlessly enforces the restrictions on return. So passengers have to choose between leaving their possessions behind or paying through the nose to put them in the hold.

Oh great, more adverts!

"The dream is for airport displays to change as a passenger approaches, displaying information about their flight, or a targeted advert."

First we will have to watch the advertising, only then will we be shown the flight information. The amount of advertising will increase until they track your RFID to the duty free shop till and enough money gets spent.

aye

Other applications

How about intelligent directions to stop passengers getting lost?

Display screens that can show passenger name and directions when the passenger is within a set distance of the screen. Since there is a limit to the number of prople who can stand within range of one screen, it should be able to handle the capacity.

How about more targeted announcements:

"Would Passenger Smith traveling to Nowhere please go to gate 987 immediately" can be broadcast only to the speakers within range of Mrs Smith.

And take this out of the airport - cheap, accurate tracking of anything in a large space.

Online check in?

I don't know about everyone else, but I'm pretty sure that somewhere around none of the printers I've used to print a boarding pass can add an RFID tag to the output.

Maybe Ryanair might not object to the odd few pennies of cost an RFID tag would add, but I'm pretty sure that they'll have a right cow about the cost of going back to printing all boarding cards at the airport check-in.

right on

"I take it this is The INtelligent Airport circa 1989 then?"

Not to mention the cute antiquated reference to changing what's displayed on airport screens...really now? Anyone with eyes can see the future is getting all that flight information (and lovely, lovely advertising) piped into the herd's iPhones.

More pointless security?

"Penty was discussing TINA's work at UCL's Crime Science Conference. For security purposes the RFID tags can check who is going through secure areas, or running, or going against the flow of passengers. The information can trigger security staff to monitor CCTV of the areas identified."

Unless of course they discard or wrap their boarding pass in tin foil...

That is if there is anyone left alive from ground staff

If I was ground staff I would definitely look for a different job. Passive RFID tags need to be irradiated with a sufficient amount of energy to talk back. Doing this in a building the size of the Gatwick departure lounge should be enough to unglue the back of your retina after a few months of constant exposure (if not earlier).

If they really want to do that they should switch to plastic reusable boarding cards with active tags (or other tech like mesh altogether) which are programmed at the checkin and collected before departure. This however is another can of worms which will categorically refuse to be re-canned once it has been opened.

Advertising?

That'll be as good as the internal US flight I was on a few months ago where I nearly smashed the cheap'n'nasty screen embedded in the back of the seat in front of me that wouldn't show anything other than adverts unless you swiped your credit card and paid to watch something (doubtless little better than the adverts).

Luckily, for me or the screen, not sure which - I found some tape and heavy card (i.e. static advertising) that blocked the screen nicely.

Re: Advertising?

Nick - if you'd named the airline, we could all avoid it. Or take tape 'n' card in our hand luggage to fly with them. Or a can of spray-paint. Oops, it's a liquid.

Why American advertisers have to shove everything in your face defeats me. Eventually, it just becomes background noise, and totally ineffective. Bit like the idea we should encourage more and more CCTV cameras - far too much information to process for the cash-strapped 'security' (haha) bods, and they become basically useless.

KLM is better

On my last KLM flight I got to watch the Linux boot sequence twice as the inflight entertainment crashed twice during the flight. Given the number of missing symbol and assorted module-not-found errors it's a miracle it only crashed twice, but it was more entertaining than their choice of movies.

Why every screen was showing the console baffles me, though. Aren't those seat-back displays just peripherals?

OK Now I KNOW you're making that up

indeed

Pengins can fly?

I saw something similar on the last Thomson flight I took. Though a system reboot seemed to be the alleged fix for symptoms such as a broken screen or a handset with a less than connected cable. It was almost like a busman's holiday... Still didn't see any penguins on holiday, only some flamingos.

For passengers useless, for baggage very convenient

As was mentioned in the passing in the article, this would be incredibly efficient for baggage handling, and would seriously speed up that side of the flight equation (so maybe we wouldnt have to check in at least 45mins beforehand to ensure your luggage makes it to your flight!). And as baggage has to be submitted at a check in desk. this is clearly doable.

But as has been mentioned above, many airlines are going to print from home tickets, so the addition of RFIDs to those definitely negates the purpose of the scheme - getting people through check in before they even get to the airport. Also as mentioned above, if an RFID is used to track what someone is doing in the airport - this will have zero affect on stopping someone planning to do something illegal. They'll just leave there ticket (or remove the RFID surreptitiously) and leave it in another area of the airport.

So in conclusion, for passengers this is next to useless. For baggage, this could be a massive improvement!

@JaitcH - Chronology Fail

BAA will have been looking at this tech a decade ago for setting the specification of T5 and years ago in setting the specification for the current central terminal project. The state of the art was below the accuracy at which the system is economic. Sure they could have gone ahead in the hope the tech would improve and accepted the increased manpower intervention costs in the mean time but do we really need another reason for ticket prices to go up? Heathrow's landing fees are already among the highest in the world.

Maybe in the light of this research they should look again for the next project, Heathrow East. Maybe they are looking already.

Heathrow is a living example of failure and their attitude is little better

It is hard to look at a technology 10 years before it's arrival, besides T5 was customised for that other British loss leader called BA and it's unlikelihood of making up pension shortfalls.

BAA has relied on an acquiescent government riding roughshod over the local populace whilst it follows its myopic plans. An airport of this size needs diversification with high-speed rail links between downtown and the peripheral airports. This government should force it to assign services to the other 'London' airports instead of sinking all of it's assets in this anachronism.

LHR is a blight on southern England with stacked aircraft dotted all over the place - polluting the countryside.

The difference between HKG and LHR is well made: one is progressive and the other regressive.

@Heathrow

I always considered Heathrow a sort of desensitization experiment.

You arrive on your nice comfortable efficient Singapore Airlines flight, after a week in nice,comfortable, efficient Singapore, or Malaysia, or Korea, or Japan then Heathrow is a very nice efficient way to inoculate you against the world of broken escalators, dirt, permanent half-finished construction and British 'customer-service' before you hit the tube.

Lollygaggers

As someone that unfortunately travels a good bit, I notice when I get delayed by a straggler that does not appear to be sweating from a run. I am surprised nobody else even mentioned this. I for one would be very happy if Senator or Gold status people (after a fair warning) were stripped of their status for waiting until they hear their name called over the PA while a planeload of passengers is waiting on that person's lazy, selfish ass so the magic words, "Boarding Completed" can be spoken. On accident, no big deal. Repeated offenses?

I heard of a fellow that does this on purpose, and thinks it is funny. The airlines did not track this in the past, or were too afraid of their status passengers to do anything about it...and better to delay the pushback, miss the takeoff slot, and let the whole plane wait than to upset this fellow so he can get his jollies. I sure hope they are tracking this behavior now, and if the RFID can be used to locate lollygaggers...which seems to me the goal in the article...then perhaps things are taking a turn.

Unfortunately, I know there are the "other" uses of the RFID tags...mentioned above in other coments in detail.